If you want to fully understand my journey with Café Britaly then, first, you need to know about my drastically aborted maiden trip there. It had been one of those impulsive decisions. Nearby and with time to kill, I wheeled my bike towards the discreet, blue-and-pink Peckham shopfront where Bocca di Lupo veterans Richard Crampton-Platt and chef Alex Purdie have recently been infuriating Milanese TikTokers and imagined nonnas alike with their self-consciously heretical take on Italian cuisine. An intriguing solo lunch beckoned.
And then, as I approached, I spotted Hugh Wright — the restaurant’s publicist, someone I know a bit, and a sort of infectiously fabulous godfather figure in London’s hospitality industry — sitting at a window table in what I could already see was an awkwardly tiny space.
Reader, would it shock you to hear that I immediately gave it a hard swerve and rode off, undetected? It is difficult to say exactly why. But it felt like a pretty unavoidable tell that, having closely observed the rollout of this place — wincing from afar at its internet-baiting premise and oddly lumpen dish aesthetics — I was not expecting an especially smooth day at the office. And so, duly, I didn’t fancy compounding a likely calamity with the added discomfort of a professionally implicated acquaintance in my eyeline.
Well, not for the first time, more fool me for being trigger-happy with my judgments. Having now made a return trip beyond the threshold of Café Britaly, I can tell you that it is, in the best possible way, not at all what it seems.
Again, though, that name really is a barrier. It’s a bit like starting a men’s grooming brand and calling it Metrosexual Healing. And it is all the more baffling when you saunter up Rye Lane, through plumes of suya barbecue smoke, to find the precise opposite of phallic pepper grinders, Union Jack-daubed Vespas, or any other overt pieces of larky, British-Italian signalling. Inside, it’s a tightly proportioned, 40-cover space strewn with cylindrical fuchsia pillows and restrained, faintly geometric wall prints by Kate Carpenter (Purdie’s partner). A photo of Jude Law dressed as the pope is the only concession to winking, Britalian camp.
Of course, if the decor is unexpectedly sober, then the menu itself is very much dancing on the table and doing limoncello burps. Pizzetta crunch — a nod to Purdie’s Scottish roots — is an artery-clogging wonder: a bubbled sporran of deep-fried margherita pizza, lifted by fennel seeds and, impressively, both fresh and gorgeously chip-shop greasy. Elsewhere, from a snacks and nibbles section that features ‘nduja Scotch eggs and weighty aubergine polpette, there was a salumi plate of finocchiona and pancetta; beautifully sourced, ribboned in soft, sweet fat and enlivened by zinging, thickly chunked house giardiniera.
A photo of Jude Law dressed as the pope is the only concession to winking, Britalian camp
Soon, there was a rattling negroni sbagliato beside me — enjoyably punchy and, staggeringly, only £5.50. And then we were onto the Britalian carbonara, the cream-laden, fried egg-topped bit of obvious rage bait that led to all those angry online comments and Gino D’Acampo reaction GIFs. The truth? Beyond that somewhat superfluous egg and fatty guanciale that could have been crisped a touch more, it’s a consoling, subtly magnetic rib-squeezing hug of pure comfort, ravishingly pan-fresh and a total showcase for Purdie and his team’s palpable experience. The same couldn’t be said of a fennel and caper salad, cloaked in a wincing dressing and tumbled with rocket, that was a little raggedly domestic. But then there was the zuppa inglese — a prettily layered, Italianate trifle featuring boozy sponge, luxuriant custard and a crowning sprinkle of toasted almonds — to make it all better. And after that, hilariously, I looked up and spotted Hugh, back in again with friends (“I basically live here”) and stagily crossing his fingers after we had said hello.
Well, he needn’t worry. Though it may present as an unsubtle and silly play for virality, Café Britaly is in fact a sensitively rendered, keenly priced, modern rewiring of the neighbourhood bistro and a perfect showcase for the bravura intensity of Purdie’s cooking. The hordes of repeat visitors crowding in for porchetta Sunday roasts and rice pudding arancini show it has struck a chord locally. No, it is not your nonna’s restaurant. And it is all the better for it.
